Medicine and Missions

I'm taking the Bioethics subject this semester. Our lecturer, Rev Dr Andrew Sloane, introduced us to the unit by sharing this article with us:

https://www.lausanne.org/content/lga/2017-03/rethinking-medicine-and-missions

Here are some of my thoughts:

Missionary George Leslie Mackay was commissioned by the Presbyterian Church in Canada and arrived in Taiwan in 1872. Blessed with a prodigious memory, he learned to write one hundred new Chinese characters daily and spent the rest of his time speaking with anybody who would listen to him. He was often mocked by the people and attacked with pig faeces! Sometimes angry mobs would attempt to kill him. He even caught life-threatening diseases like meningitis and malaria. Eventually, the medical services he provided to the people became so highly appreciated that he became a folk hero figure in Taiwanese history. He established churches, schools, and the Mackay Memorial Hospital. Mackay was one of the most remarkable missionaries in the late Victoria era, whereby during his three decades in Taiwan he single-handedly established the groundwork of the northern Presbyterian mission. Even after his death, the seeds he planted on the land continued to flourish. Mackay Medical College was established in 2009, and it has already climbed to the top preference private medical school in Taiwan amongst the applicants. The Presbyterian Church is still the largest denomination in Taiwan today. I think he is a great example of a passionate medical missionary whom God had used greatly and he did what is right for God and the people group he was called to serve.
More on Mackay:

http://www.internationalbulletin.org/issues/2010-04/2010-04-221-rohrer.html

However, I don’t think there is an opportunity for a medical practitioner practicing medicine in the developed world to serve God in the way Mackay did. This type of opportunity might exist if I am called to a very undeveloped and dangerous nation, and I don’t even know if I will dare to, should I receive such a calling one day. Instead, we see drainage of resources towards the opposite direction. For example, doctors in Taiwan are being underpaid and overworked severely, and they’re trying hard to either get out (many sitting the USMLE to go to the States, or even the AMC exam to come to Australia), or switch to the field of cosmetic medicine where they can earn a more acceptable amount of money (but in my opinion, I do not think they are practicing medicine anymore). This just puts the brain-drain situation into a vicious cycle. And Taiwan is not even a “Majority World” type of country.

It seems inevitable that developed nations face the burden of an ageing population. The ageing population need medical care. However, the expansive population pyramids of the Majority World countries cries out even more acutely for help. Practicing medicine in urban Australia is relatively comfortable compared other places. However, we are never short of people genuinely needing medical attention, and it seems like we can never have enough doctors. Even urban Australian doctors encounter burnouts, and there have been at least 20 documented cases of junior doctor suicides since 2007.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/obsessed-with-the-fear-of-failure/news-story/d707f7cd8ee0173b17fd289a99889a25

However, increasing the number of medical school places doesn’t solve the distribution problem or the difficult (and even abusive) work conditions. I know doctors are much more needed in rural Australia or Taiwan than in Eastwood, but the thought of moving over to those places is already a struggle for me, and how much harder would it be if it’s a Majority World region? So I am stuck in a conflict within myself currently. Interestingly, one of Mackay’s most famous quote was: “It is better to burn up than rust out.”

I wonder how medicine will look like in a few years’ time, especially when resources are so unevenly distributed, and people with more money gets access to better care while the weaker and more vulnerable don’t. Furthermore, it seems to me that the developed nations with constricted pyramid patterns can only go in the direction of decline as people die off without leaving behind many young people, and the people groups with the highest birth rates will increasingly populate the earth in the future. If these people do not know God (ie. there’s no one going out there to evangelise to them), the world will fall into greater disaster.